My brain and heart divorced a decade ago over who was to blame about how big of a mess I have become. Eventually, they couldn’t be in the same room with each other. Now my head and heart share custody of me. I stay with my brain during the week and my heart gets me on weekends.
They never speak to one another – instead, they give me the same note to pass to each other every week and it always says the same thing:
“This is all your fault”
On Sundays my heart complains about how my head has let me down in the past and on Wednesday my head lists all the times my heart screwed things up for my future. They blame each other for the state of my life.
There has been a lot of yelling and crying so, lately, I’ve been spending a lot of time with my gut who serves as my unofficial therapist. Most nights, I sneak out of the window in my ribcage and slide down my spine and collapse on my guts plush leather chair that is always open for me. And I just sit sit sit sit until the sun comes up.
Last evening, my gut asked me if I was having a hard time being caught between my heart and my head.
I nodded. “I don’t know if I can live with either of them anymore. My heart is always sad about something that happened yesterday while my head is always worried about something that may happen tomorrow,” I lamented.
My gut squeezed my hand.
“I just can’t live with my mistakes of the past or my anxiety about the future,” I sighed.
My gut smiled and said, “In that case, you should go stay with your lungs for a while.”
I was confused. The look on my face gave it away. “If you are exhausted about your heart’s obsession with the fixed past and your mind’s focus on the uncertain future, your lungs are the perfect place for you. There is no yesterday in your lungs. There is no tomorrow there either. There is only now. There is only inhale. There is only exhale. There is only this moment. There is only breath and in that breath you can rest while your heart and head work their relationship out.”
This morning, while my brain was busy reading tea leaves and while my heart was staring at old photographs, I packed a little bag and walked to the door of my lungs. Before I could even knock she opened the door with a smile and as a gust of air embraced me she said, “What took you so long?”
Written by: John Roedel
